orcs – Lair of the Lagomorph

With the deadline for the 1 Million Miniatures challenge approaching (May 9th!) and having been distracted from painting for a bit due to participating in a Vampire the Eternal Struggle tournament, it was time to get back on track and make a dent in the last 21 models needed for me to hit 100.

I’ve painted one Blood Bowl team already during this challenge (the Amazons) as my gaming group is keen to get into Blood Bowl. Another friend was keen to join in but not necessarily interested in the hobby aspect of the game and as I had this Orc team lying around from an old starter set I decided to paint it up for him to borrow.

I’ve been painting quite a few Warhammer and Warhammer 40k orcs/orks recently and decided to changing things up and go for a blue scheme rather than the reds and blacks I’ve been going with. I quite like the look of these, might have to paint some more blue armoured Orks in the future.

Painting process-wise, there’s not too much to write about, this is the good old base coat, Agrax Earthshade all over, highlights type of painting. The skin recipe is the same as my Warhammer orcs.

I enjoyed painting the markings on these, it’s a fun part of painting any orcs/orks, and you can get away with being a bit messy, you can be sure orcs wouldn’t be particularly neat.

These models take me to 91 total for the challenge, just need to find 9 more to do inside the next two weeks and I’ll be all done. Back to the painting table!

I’ve been chipping away at this small unit of archers for my Orcs and Goblins over the past few weeks. I have not been in any particular rush and it’s been quite nice painting at a sedate pace. I have a tendency to want to get things done fast, but with work quite busy lately it’s been good to do the fun things in life in a more relaxed fashion!

These are new casts of old models like much of the rest of the newly (re)released Orcs and Goblins models for Warhammer The Old World. These are pretty old sculpts now and were current when I started the hobby in the early 2000s. I’m absolutely the demographic for this nostalgia fueled set of releases!

I tried to make them look generally cohesive but in a haphazard manner, picking out their clothes in different colours. For my own future reference (I have plenty more of these to paint!) these are: Vallejo Model Color (VMC) German Fieldgrey WWII (also used for the fletching), VMC US Field Drab, VMC Black, and VMC German Camo Medium Brown (also used for the furs). The rest of the colours used are the same as for the rest of the army as detailed in my Orc Warboss post.

One nice discovery painting these was a new method (new for me at least!) for placing pigment powders on the bases in a much less messy way. So far I’ve been applying them dry, which tends to get them everywhere, and fix them using airbrushed varnish (at low pressure but still very messy). For these I experimented with mixing them with acrylic thinner before applying them in patches to the bases. I then dipped my brush in water and blended the patches into the uncovered section to get an uneven look. This method was much cleaner than dry application and was a lot easier to control. I’d recommend trying it out if you’re using dry pigments on your bases!